Wednesday, September 11, 2019

The evil of
abuse

As I look
back at my life, there is much that has become clearer regarding the effects of
what happened to me as a child. There was compartmentalization that occurred that
I was not aware of at the time. It wasn’t until my father died in such a shocking
way that the fantasy of a happy childhood was shattered.

I wasn’t
tortured or severely beaten as a boy. I’d received some seriously painful
spankings true, but it was not a regular occurrence. Most of the time I was
left to myself to do whatever I pleased which was mostly normal kid stuff. The
abuse was usually at night, secret, and never spoken of. It didn’t fit with
what was happening during the day and was in contrast to what I was being
taught as a good Christian boy.

It didn’t
compute, so to speak, and therefore had to be relegated to a tight little box
in my mind that could only be opened at special times and special places with
special people.

As I grew up
the contradiction of the two became too much for me and I really began to
wonder if I was entirely sane. It was the reason I believe for much of my anger
that I couldn’t explain and difficulty in relating to normal people. I felt
different because I was different. I was two people struggling for dominance and
the struggle was driving me up the wall.

Part of my
journey into healthy relating to others was to accept both parts of my history
as a continuous narrative. I had to accept what happened to me, what I
experienced both by night and by day as my real past. They had to fuse in order
to be a whole person and bring peace to that inner conflict. There is great
peace in the acceptance of reality.

2 comments:

Good job. Yes, the duality is a "crazy maker". Counseling helps. Support groups help. Inner healing prayer like Sozo, Transformation Prayer, Immanuel Approach or HeartSync all help as well. Healing is important and those times where we question the abuse and doubt ourselves is when we need to gravitate toward the healing the most.

I was lucky to always be in a location where services were available to help with guys like me. I feel sad for those I have communicated with where counselling and support are in short supply. It would have been terrible to have to deal with this alone.

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